imagine if the entire function is a single if-else statement which they kept adding onto, but could never refactor lest everything crashes down and burn.
I once worked on a project doing firmware that a lot of people have likely used (printer firmware for a big-name company). One of the more trafficked functions was something like 1500 lines of “if-elseif-elseif…” with something like 13 or 14 different cases.
It did end up getting refactored to something polymorphic and based on a configuration file to cut out any unnecessary steps, but it was like that for a while before I got there, and was like that for most of the year that I was part of the project.
To be fair, I think massive “switchboards” can be relatively clean. The key is that each step contains little enough logic. 1500 lines of 13-14 cases means the average block was > 100 lines, and at that point I definitely agree that it should probably have been refactored a long time ago. Just splitting that into 13-14 smaller functions, and using the switchboard as a delegator could be completely fine.
imagine if the entire function is a single if-else statement which they kept adding onto, but could never refactor lest everything crashes down and burn.
I once worked on a project doing firmware that a lot of people have likely used (printer firmware for a big-name company). One of the more trafficked functions was something like 1500 lines of “if-elseif-elseif…” with something like 13 or 14 different cases.
It did end up getting refactored to something polymorphic and based on a configuration file to cut out any unnecessary steps, but it was like that for a while before I got there, and was like that for most of the year that I was part of the project.
To be fair, I think massive “switchboards” can be relatively clean. The key is that each step contains little enough logic. 1500 lines of 13-14 cases means the average block was > 100 lines, and at that point I definitely agree that it should probably have been refactored a long time ago. Just splitting that into 13-14 smaller functions, and using the switchboard as a delegator could be completely fine.
4k+ nested if statements with comments.